Delivered at the opening of the Floral Festival, Library Hall, Topeka, November 9th, 1886.

Ladies and Gentlemen: In responding to the request of the Misses Bristol, to formally open this beautiful festival, I am fully aware of the fact that I have assumed a difficult role. My botanical education was sadly neglected, and I had better confess, at once, that I know very little about flowers. I delight in their beauty. I have always believed that, where plants are blooming in gardens or windows, it is an indication of a sweet and beautiful home life—of taste, of refinement, of hopefulness and aspiration. I have visited several of the most noted gardens in this country, and found rare pleasure in their treasures of bud and blossom, of leaf and foliage. And yet, if I were asked, I could tell the names of very few of the plants in any garden.

I am, however, glad to do whatsoever I can to promote the success of this novel and beautiful festival of flowers, and especially to aid and encourage the ladies who have arranged it. They have not only furnished the people of the Capital City with a lovely exhibition, but have answered, practically, a question often asked: “What is there for woman’s hands to do?” Here is one occupation, at least, in which two women have achieved a signal success; have supplied something a community wants, and have done it well; have found something to do which enlists at once their taste, their intelligence and their energies, and in doing it have benefitted the city in which they live as well as themselves.

I very gladly, therefore, comply with their request, that I should formally open this festival. It is a beautiful display of flowers—creditable alike to the ladies whose skill and taste and enterprise devised and arranged it, and to the city in which it is held. And now, speaking for them, I bid you one and all welcome, and declare the flower show formally opened.